Financial Transparency Coalition

The following answer to a written question has been published by the States of Jersey today:

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE CHIEF MINISTER BY THE DEPUTY OF ST. MARY ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON TUESDAY 18th JANUARY 2011 Question Can the Chief Minister inform members how many Tax Information Exchange Agreements were in force at the beginning of 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010? Can he further tell members, for each of those years, how many requests for information have been received, from how many countries they were received, and in how many cases was the information requested found and...

Bob Diamond was before the Treasury Select Committee Tuesday. Chuka Umunna, MP fr Streatham, was one of those questioning him. And as the Daily Mail notes, he tabled some new evidence on the use of tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions by Barclays: I admit I spoke to Chuka’s office about this before the event, suggesting how they might find this data from the annual return forms of the bank.

It seems right to juxtapose two articles in the FT over the last couple of days. First this:

Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, already under fire over a multibillion-dollar telecoms corruption scandal, suddenly has a more down-to-earth problem on his plate – the skyrocketing price of onions. Their price at India’s retail vegetable markets has doubled from Rs35 ($0.78) per kg to Rs80 in the past few days, angering consumers already feeling the pinch from a year of food price inflation and rising fuel prices.

And secondly this:

The FT has noted:

New York state prosecutors could file civil fraud charges against Ernst & Young for allegedly helping Lehman Brothers hide debt, according to a person familiar with the matter. The office of Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general who will be sworn in as the state’s governor next month, could file a lawsuit as early as this week, this person said. If a lawsuit is filed, it would be the first allegations involving Lehman since the bank filed for bankruptcy in 2008, and the first charges against an accounting firm in...